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Supreme Court Affordable Care Act Decision

This
morning the Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional,
therefore upholding the law. The majority opinion was authored by Chief Justice
John Roberts and was joined by Justices Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. The ruling represents a major victory for
public health advocates who worked tirelessly over the past two years in
support of the law.

On a 5 to 4 decision, the Court ruled that the individual mandate may stand as
a tax. While they found that the mandate does violate the Commerce Clause, the
majority of the Court found that it is constitutional under the taxing power of
the Congress. On the Medicaid issue, a majority of the Court holds that the
Medicaid expansion is constitutional but that it is unconstitutional for the
federal government to withhold Medicaid funds for noncompliance with the
expansion provisions. Chief Justice Roberts stated,"Nothing in our
opinion precludes Congress from offering funds under the ACA to expand the
availability of healthcare and requiring that states accepting such funds
comply with the conditions on their use. What Congress is not free to do is to
penalize states that choose not to participate in that new program by taking
away their existing Medicaid funding."

We will be analyzing the
ruling along with others in greater depth and will be studying the analyses of
the decision by experts on constitutional law as well as other sources. We will
report back as appropriate. For an overview of the law as well as
state-specific fact sheets on how your state is benefiting from the ACA, visit
the Healthcare.govwebsite.

For additional information about the court's
decision, visit the Supreme Court's
website or SCOTUSblog.
Look for future webinar announcements which give further detail about this
ruling.